Whoaaaah! A queasy switch-back season of twists and turns has lurched back towards glory.

It is only a few days ago when Boro fans were angrily cancelling hotels in London area, berating their faint-heart former favourites as bottle job charlatans and sneering at the play-off dates being confirmed as if the Football League were trolling them.

Now suddenly optimism levels are surging and everyone is hammering Trivago and looking at train times certain of celebration again. Whoah.

It has been a dizzying few weeks with results and prospects lurching from side to side, and now as the clock ticks down and the stakes rise, things are not easing up any.

The drab, dismal defeat at Sheffield United in midweek came as a double dose of misery.

Not only was a game woeful in itself as Boro were out-played and out-fought by a team that showed more intensity and desire but that was compounded by the agony of sickening swing against us elsewhere as on a dreary night pregnant with malice, every single other result went against Boro.

Red hot upstarts Millwall won to brashly gatecrash the top six and Boro were muscled aside and sucked back down into the pack and haunted by dark fears of fizzling out into impending ordinariness.

Against Bristol, wearing their famous green and purple ‘bruise coloured’ away kit presumably designed by a colour-blind primary school competition winner, Boro fans were put on the emotional waltzers once again.

Boro kicked off with the possibility that they could get dragged down as far as tenth if they lost and the usual suspects conspired to win - and for a while there it didn’t look good as Boro stood on a rake and thwacked themselves square in the teeth.

After a disjointed start a comedy of errors in defence led to stunned Bristol being gifted a scrambled, scruffy goal that punctured the atmosphere, leaving the collective groans of ‘typical Boro’ to escape.

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They responded in style though as they raced through the gears from lethargic to frantic and their sudden pressure caused fragile City’s cracks to appear and George Friend quickly forced a leveller.

The joy didn’t last long though as Patrick Bamford was sparked out after a mid-air mangling from man mountain Aden Flint and left needing 11 minutes of treatment before being gingerly stretchered off the pitch wearing a neck-brace and receiving oxygen. It was a sickening sight and it felt like the fates were moving against Boro again.

As it was Any Time Ayala popped up again to bundle Boro in front and after that it was plain sailing - and the pendulum started to swing back again with results elsewhere.

George Friend celebrates scoring against Bristol City (Image: Evening Gazette)

Had Sheffield United won again they would have been right back in the mix. Had Millwall won they would have seized the precious top six spot by the jugular - and possibly put the boot in too - ahead of a Boro game they would only need to draw. But the two sides cancelled each other out in a draw.

Brentford got a point at on-fire Fulham thanks a to a late goal but that doesn’t look enough for them. They are four points adrift and need four teams to falter to squeeze in.

And Derby continued their annual implosion with a predictable red-faced 3-1 defeat to minnow neighbours ‘Nigel Clough’s Burton’, a moment so loaded with history and subtext and contradiction and emotional angst that it is almost performance art.

Boro did that. They dealt with the pressure. They dealt with a set-back and they delivered a crucial result when it mattered.

Bristol were in poor form and only clinging on to the play-offs by their finger nails but ruthless Boro showed no mercy as they crashed their hobnails down on City’s cuticles and killed off their play-off hopes.

It was an important moment. It has put some of the swirling doubts to bed and catapulted Boro back into a strong position just as the season comes to the boil.

Now they need to do that again next week and peel Derby’s fingers from the ledge too, break them one by one if necessary and cast them into the chasm of broken dreams.

And they must set a steady course now. No messing around. We don’t want come away reeling from another wild stomach-churning lurch. Whoah.